Quick summary: A certified translator cannot correct an error on your source document, and should not be asked to. A certified translation asserts that the translation corresponds to the original — so if the original says the wrong date, a faithful translation says the wrong date too. What a translator can do is render it accurately and, where appropriate, make the discrepancy visible. Correcting the underlying record is a matter for the authority that issued it.
You send a birth certificate for translation and notice the year is wrong, or a surname is misspelled, or the certificate says your father's name where your mother's should be.
The instinctive request is reasonable: while you're translating it, could you just put the right one?
The answer is no, and the reason is the same reason you are paying for a certified translation rather than any translation.
What certification actually asserts
A certified translation carries a named practitioner's number and credential, verifiable by whoever receives it. What that practitioner is asserting is narrow and specific: this translation corresponds to that document.
A translator who silently changes a date is no longer asserting that. They are producing a document that says something the original does not — and, because the certification is still attached, doing so invisibly.
That is not a technicality. It is the difference between a certified translation and a forgery, and it is why the answer does not change no matter how obviously the original is wrong.
So what happens to the error?
It comes through into the translation, accurately.
If your certificate reads 1987 and your passport reads 1978, the translation will read 1987, and the discrepancy will be visible to whoever compares them. That is the correct outcome — the mismatch existed before the translation and the translation did not hide it.
Depending on the nature of the problem, a translator may add a bracketed note recording what appears on the source. That makes the position clearer to a reader without altering the content.
Errors that are not errors
Worth ruling out before you go further, because several things look like mistakes and are not.
Different name order. Many documents place the family name first. A translation that preserves the source order is not wrong.
Transliteration differences. A name written in another script has several defensible English spellings. A translation that renders it differently from your passport is a consistency problem to be solved by telling the translator your passport spelling — not an error in the document.
Different date formats. A date written day-month-year against month-day-year can read as an error to someone expecting the other convention.
Terminology that seems wrong. An "extract" is not the same as a "certificate", and a "provisional" award is not a "conferred" one. A translation using the narrower term is usually being precise rather than careless.
If you think you have found an error, check these first. Most queries turn out to be one of them.
When it is a real error
Once you have established the source document genuinely says the wrong thing, there is only one route: go back to the authority that issued it.
A birth certificate is corrected by the civil registry that issued it. A degree is corrected by the university. A police certificate is corrected by the issuing police authority. Each has its own process, and each will issue a corrected document that can then be translated.
This is slower than you want it to be, and it is the only approach that produces a document that will survive scrutiny.
Why lodging with a known error is risky
The Department of Home Affairs requires the original document and the English translation to be provided together, and states that if satisfactory evidence is not provided, the application may be refused.
An identity detail that does not match across your documents is exactly the kind of thing that generates a request for more information — or worse, a question about whether the documents describe the same person.
Two things distinguish a manageable situation from a damaging one: whether the discrepancy was disclosed or discovered, and whether it was explained.
What to do if there is no time to fix it
Sometimes a correction cannot be obtained before a deadline. In that case:
- Do not have it altered in translation. This converts a documentary problem into a credibility problem.
- Obtain the faithful translation, error included.
- Explain the discrepancy in writing as part of your lodgement, setting out what the correct detail is and what evidence supports it.
- Provide corroborating documents that show the correct detail — a passport, another certificate, an official record.
- Start the correction process anyway, so you can supply the corrected document when it arrives.
Disclosed and explained is a workable position. Silently inconsistent is not.
Where this comes up most
Bank statements
A bank statement translation reproduces every figure as printed. If a transaction is recorded wrongly by the bank, the correction comes from the bank.
Academic transcripts
On an academic transcript, a wrong grade, a missing subject or a misspelled name must be fixed by the institution and reissued.
Civil records and employment documents
Birth, marriage and death certificates with transposed dates or misspelled parents' names are common, and civil registries generally have an established correction process. Where an employer has issued a letter with the wrong dates, a corrected letter is straightforward to request and far better than an explanation.
A note on translator notes
Where a translator adds a bracketed observation, it should be clearly distinguishable as theirs rather than as text from the original. That distinction is what allows a note to clarify without contaminating the record.
If you receive a translation where you cannot tell what came from the document and what came from the translator, that is worth raising.
Before you order
Check the source document properly before translation, not after. If something is wrong, starting the correction now runs it in parallel with everything else rather than after everything else.
NAATI publishes its practitioner identification guidance and Home Affairs its document and translation requirements; both are updated over time, so check the current pages before relying on this summary.